Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes: "Appendix: The Correspondence of Ed Wood and Bela Lugosi"

Ed Wood was a man of letters. Many of them.

NOTE: This article concludes my coverage of Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams (Arcane Shadows Press, 2024).

The story: "Appendix" by Frank Dello Stritto and Edward D. Wood, Jr.

Synopsis: Circa April 1973, author Frank Dello Stritto visited the Ackermansion, the Los Angeles home of Famous Monsters of Filmland editor Forrest J. Ackerman. While there, he found some old letters that had been written by Ed Wood in March 1954, most of them addressed to actor Bela Lugosi. Dello Stritto meticulously dictated them into a tape recorder, then transcribed the recordings when he got home to New Jersey. What follows are nine of those letters.

Edwin Schallert.

March 1, 1954: Ed is trying to secure work for Bela, who is headlining a revue at the Silver Slipper in Las Vegas. During a recent work trip to Vegas, Ed managed to run up a bill of $300, which amounts to over $3,000 in today's money. Bela is now obligated to pay most of this, with Ed contributing $48 of his own money. Ed disputes the bill and says it is very important to him that people know he is not trying to take advantage of Bela in any way, financially or otherwise. Eddie Fox, the publicity director for the Silver Slipper, is in Los Angeles to meet with a talent agent named Lou Sherrill. Ed says he will meet with Eddie Fox to discuss the matter personally, and he chastises Bela for mentioning the money dispute to Lou Sherrill. ("You could have come to me first.")

Meanwhile, Ed is convinced that the upcoming film The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters (1954) will be "a hell of a lift" for Lugosi's career. He imagines the news stories it will generate, bringing attention to both Lugosi and the Silver Slipper. Furthermore, Ed says that Lou Sherrill has an idea for a new nightclub act starring Bela. Ed tells Bela that the actor's comeback is in full swing and that more triumphs lie ahead. As an example, Ed says he is talking to Los Angeles Times writer Edwin Schallert, who is planning a big article about Bela Lugosi. Schallert is headed to Vegas to review actor Howard Keel's show, and he will be swinging by the Silver Slipper to check out Bela's revue.

Ed warns Bela not to get taken by all the "sharpies" in Las Vegas. Ed says that, when he was there on business, he kept track of every expense he incurred. Bela should not pay for anything that Ed did not account for personally. He worries that he now looks bad in the eyes of Lou Sherrill. Ed stresses that Bela needs to tell Lou this was all a misunderstanding and that Ed is not a conman or a parasite.

Ed then returns to the subject of the Bowery Boys movie. Ed tells Bela not to worry about learning all the dialogue in the script. "We'll get it this time," he says. Ed claims to have a three-picture deal with Howco and declares that at least one of these films will be a star vehicle for Bela. According to Ed, horror films are enjoying newfound popularity at the moment; he points to some 3D films from Universal and Warner Bros. as examples. Bela's new film should fit right in. Eddie closes the letter by rehashing the matter of the $300 bill and emphasizing that he is being honest and scrupulous in his dealings with Bela.

March 5, 1954: Several days later, Ed responds to a "seven-point note" from Lugosi. Ed says that Schallert's story has not been printed yet. When it is, Ed will buy ten copies and send five to Lou Sherrill. Ed also thanks Bela for explaining the previous awkward situation to Lou via telegram. ("His attitude changed for the better almost immediately.")

Ed says that "the troubles on my picture [presumably 1954's Jail Bait] have ended," meaning that he will now be able to pay his previous debt to Bela. On the other hand, producer George Weiss says that Ed and Bela's previous film, Glen or Glenda (1953), has not turned a profit yet.  Ed is dubious of this, because Weiss has managed to pay off $1,000 in debts since it opened and Ed is owed 50% of the take. Ed further claims he has two more films in the works and thinks he can get Bela $5,000 for ten days of work. Ed will be producing Bela's movie for Monogram and will decide who gets paid what.

Bela has sent some press clippings to Ed, which Ed then forwarded on to Alex Gordon for preservation. Ed also congratulates Bela on extending his Vegas show another two weeks and says that it will not be difficult to line up some film work for the veteran actor now. He boasts that, between himself and Lou Sherrill, Bela now has "two good men on [his] side." Ed closes the letter by promising to write again soon. He also asks about some "collars" and some publicity photos.

Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes: "Afterword"

The day Ed Wood stood still.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams (Arcane Shadows Press, 2024).

The story: "Afterword" by Fred Adams, Jr.

Synopsis: In this appreciative essay, the author talks about how Ed Wood's ineptitude is ironically what brought him everlasting fame. People love to poke fun at how cheap and shoddy Ed's 1950s films were, but we shouldn't overlook the director's resourcefulness and ingenuity in making them with such limited resources. He didn't have big budgets, and he had to use his friends and acquaintances to play many of the roles in his movies. Would prestigious directors like Cecil B. DeMille and Robert Wise have fared as well under such circumstances?

Recognizable stars like Tor Johnson, Vampira, and Lyle Talbot may have been slumming when they appeared in Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), but at least they were working. Ed Wood is often called out for his reliance on stock footage and library music, but even big-budget films have used these shortcuts. Besides, Ed didn't have the money to hire composers or film expensive action sequences. He wasn't working in the studio system; he was piecing these films together from whatever scraps of material he had. Plan 9 can be seen, then, as Ed Wood's ultimate labor of love.

Excerpt:

Plan 9 was finished for $60,000. Imagine Robert Wise filming The Day the Earth Stood Still on that budget. Gort would have had stovepipes for legs and a welding mask for his face. Forbidden Planet cost just under $2 million, $125,000 of it spent to build Robby the Robot. With that kind of budget, Ed Wood might have enlisted the likes of Ray Harryhausen to animate his flying saucers instead of using Cadillac hubcaps dangling from fishing line.

An inverted ice cream cone.

Reflections: This fun little essay by author Fred Adams, Jr. (presumably this gentleman) gave me flashbacks to a track called "Cheepnis" by Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention from the double live album Roxy & Elsewhere (1974). The song is a tribute to low-budget monster movies of the 1950s, and the strangely-spelled title refers to a special quality that these films have. Frank begins the song with a spoken-word monologue in which he explains the concept in more detail:

I love monster movies. I simply adore monster movies. And the cheaper they are, the better they are. And cheepnis in the case of a monster movie has nothing to do with the budget of the film, although it helps. But true cheepnis is exemplified by visible nylon strings attached to the jaw of a giant spider. 

I'll tell you a good one that I saw one time. I think the name of the film was It Conquered the World. Did you ever see that one? The monster looks sort of like an inverted ice-cream cone with teeth around the bottom. It looks like a teepee or a rounded-off pup tent affair. And it's got fangs on the base of it. I don't know why, but it's a very threatening sight. And then he's got a frown and an ugly mouth and everything .

There's this one scene where the monster is coming out of a cave. See? There's always a scene where they come out of a cave, at least once. And the rest of the cast... It must have been made around the 1950s. The lapels are about like that wide. The ties are about that wide, and they're about this short, and they always have a little revolver that they're gonna shoot the monster with. And there's always a girl who falls down and twists her ankle. Of course there is. You know how they are, the weaker sex and everything! Twisting their ankle on behalf of the little ice cream cone.  

Well, in this particular scene, folks, they didn't want to retake it because it must have been so good they wanted to keep it. But when the monster came out of the cave, just over on the left hand side of the screen, you see about this much two-by-four attached to the bottom of the thing as the guy is pushing it out, and then obviously off-camera somebody's going, "No! Get it back!" And they drag it just a little bit as the guy is going, "Kkkkhhhh! Kkkkhhhh!"  Now that's cheepnis!

While Roger Corman's It Conquered the World (1956) has no direct connection to Ed Wood, it came out around the same time as Wood's own Bride of the Monster (1955) and the aforementioned Plan 9 and is cut from the same cloth as them. Zappa's comment about Beverly Garland, the heroine of It Conquered the World, twisting her ankle reminded me of the scene in Plan 9 in which Mona McKinnon falls in the graveyard while running from the Ghoul Man (Bela Lugosi and Tom Mason). I can vouch for the part about monsters emerging from caves, too. While Eddie never actually filmed at Bronson Caves, many of his contemporaries did, most notably Phil Tucker of Robot Monster (1953) infamy.

(Side note: Fred Adams, Jr. speculates that, if Ed Wood had a bigger budget, he could have hired Elmer Bernstein. Well, Phil Tucker had no budget, and he did hire Elmer Bernstein!)

This was a very particular era in sci-fi and horror when the films were aimed largely at teenage audiences and employed wildly improbable stories, dubious acting, and extremely wonky special effects. For the most part, sci-fi and horror basically melded into one big genre during this time. The titles of such films were meant to grab you by the neck and force you to pay attention. I notice that some of the same words turn up in a lot of them: invasion, creature, attack, space, monster, robot, etc. The golden age seems to have started in the early 1950s and lasted until the mid-1960s or so.

Sure, there were classier films like Forbidden Planet (1956) and The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) being made by the big studios, but many or most of these flicks were down at the Roger Corman level, especially the independently-produced ones. I don't know if anyone has given a name to this particular chapter of film history—apart from Frank Zappa, who called it "Cheepnis"—but this era is absolutely crucial to an entire nerdy subculture built around the ironic appreciation of so-called "bad movies." The cult TV series Mystery Science Theater 3000, whose very title evokes the era, could not have existed without such movies. I think the key to the popularity of these films is that they're preposterous and easily risible, but they're also generally fast-paced, action-packed, and fun.

Much of the Ed Wood phenomenon is rooted in this "Cheepnis" era of film history. The Wood cult centers around the handful of films he made during this period. Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994) is largely about this. The stories in Warm Angora Wishes focus on this era almost exclusively. It's certainly where I started my journey into Woodology in the 1990s. Now, after more than three decades of studying the life and work of Edward D. Wood, Jr., I have come to think of "Cheepnis" as being just one aspect of the man's career. In fact, Ed's peak of productivity (roughly 1968-1973) occurred after this era was over. But I realize that some fans are just here for the 1950s stuff, so I try to give them some of that while acknowledging that there are other avenues to explore.

You might think that, since I'm reviewing a piece called "Afterword," I am done with Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams. No. No, indeed. There is one more piece to go, and it might just be one of the most interesting things in this entire anthology. Stay tuned.

Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes: "The Atomic Dream and the Wilderness of Tibet"

When Vornoff met Lobo. (Or Bela met Tor.)

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams (Arcane Shadows Press, 2024).

The story: "The Atomic Dream and the Wilderness of Tibet" by Christopher R. Gauthier

Synopsis: Dr. Eric Vornoff, once a respected scientist in his homeland of Russia, has become a hunted fugitive. The government took a dim view of his experiments to create a race of atomic supermen and cruelly separated him from his wife and son. Vornoff sadly figures that the members of his family are either dead or rotting in a gulag somewhere. Now, with secret agents still on his trail, he travels through Tibet.

Lured by the sound of gongs, Vornoff hacks his way through the wilderness until he finds a strange carnival encampment that serves as a combination freak show and brothel. He witnesses numerous perverse acts there, including the torture of caged white women. Among the patrons are some Chinese soldiers. Presiding over the camp is a transgender "dragon lady" named Madam Wu. Her servant is a hulking, mute giant known only as Lobo.

Madam Wu has Lobo show Vornoff to his tent. Once inside, the two men become fast friends despite Lobo's inability to speak. Vornoff wins Lobo's affections by giving him an angora beret that had once belonged to Vornoff's wife. The angora causes Lobo to flash back to his early childhood, before he was enslaved by Madam Wu. Together, Vornoff and Lobo destroy the camp and kill its wicked mistress. Then, they board a plane for America to continue their work.

Excerpt:

The Dragon Lady’s henchman, the towering mutant mountain of a man was hairless. A long scar, obviously a result from some course of violence, scowled across his face. He was dressed in torn rags, and they did not fit him all that well, barely in fact. Clasped around his wrists were golden bands, shackles of the Dragon Lady, Vornoff thought. Or perhaps they were from origins of another kind. The beast of Tibet gave beckon and shone the lantern into the darkness, illuminating a bivouac where Vornoff was to find shelter, privacy, and peace.

Reflections: We're approaching the end of Warm Angora Wishes, and this story feels like a summary of everything the anthology has to offer its readers. For instance, this is at least the third story about how Dr. Vornoff (Bela Lugosi) and Lobo (Tor Johnson) from Ed Wood's Bride of the Monster (1955) originally met. I'd never really given it much thought, but other Wood fans obviously did. (Interestingly, Warm Angora Wishes gives us three very different answers to that question.) We get some angora action in this story as well, plus a male-to-female transgender character. No aliens or graveyards this time, but as comedian Steven Wright once said, "You can't have everything. Where would you put it?"

A scene from Multiple Maniacs.

I think the key to writing a story for this anthology is to borrow some plot points and characters from Ed Wood's films and then add some wild card ingredient to them. In this case, the wild card is Madam Wu and her strange, evil carnival. I could not help but think of Lady Divine and her notorious Cavalcade of Perversions from John Waters' Multiple Maniacs (1970). For the uninitiated, the extremely sketchy circus in Waters' film features such dubious acts as the Puke Eater and the Bicycle Seat Sniffer. Ultimately, however, the Cavalcade is revealed as a flimsy front for a criminal organization. Lady Divine's true intention is to rob and kill her paying customers. I wonder if Madam Wu has similar intentions for her patrons.

It's hard to believe, but Eli Roth's Hostel (2005) turns 20 next year. You remember that one, right? The story follows two dumb, horny American tourists, Paxton (Jay Hernandez) and Josh (Derek Richardson), as they travel through Europe. Eventually, they wind up in Slovakia, where they find themselves at the mercy of the Elite Hunting Club, a mysterious organization that tortures, disfigures, and murders tourists for sport. Paxton and Josh are ideal victims, epitomizing the "ugly American" stereotype, so we in the audience don't hold out much hope for them.

Roth's film was part of the so-called "torture porn" craze of the early 2000s, but the moment that really haunts me from Hostel is not violent at all. It occurs when Paxton arrives outside the abandoned factory that the Elite Hunting Club has turned into a torture chamber and human slaughterhouse. Paxton doesn't know exactly what goes on in this ominous place, and he's hesitant to enter. He decides to strike up a conversation with a Japanese man (played by extreme horror director Takashi Miike) who staggers out of the building, looking like he's just spent a night in a casino.

"Excuse me," says Paxton. "How is it in there?"

"Be careful," replies the Japanese man.

"Why is that?"

"You could spend all your money in there."

The Japanese man then walks away calmly. Somehow, I think this character could have himself quite a time at Madam Wu's camp.

Podcast Tuesday: "Fonzie Needs Boats! Fonzie Needs Boats!"

Fonzie and Dr. Solo don't seem to get along terribly well on The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang.

Ostensibly, The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang (1980-81) is a show about time travel. Fonzie (Henry Winkler), Richie (Ron Howard), and Ralph (Don Most) travel haphazardly from one era to another in a constantly-malfunctioning flying saucer, accompanied by "future chick" Cupcake (Didi Conn) and a mischievous dog named Mr. Cool (Frank Welker). Their ultimate goal is to return to 1957 Milwaukee. I say the show is "ostensibly" about time travel because it's really more about hopping from one literary form to another (Westerns, horror stories, swashbucklers, etc.) and seeing how the characters fit in. I call it genre travel.

But in its second season, the show did an episode that is neither time travel nor genre travel: "Time Schlep." Here, the gang find themselves in the Bermuda Triangle on a remote island that lies outside of the time-space continuum. Time has stopped here; it's not any particular year on this island. They encounter a mad scientist (voiced by Rene Auberjonois), a damsel in distress, a giant gorilla, and an evil robot, but the story does not fit into any convenient category. We are figuratively and literally in uncharted territory this week.

Does that make for a better or worse episode? Both? Neither? Find out by listening to the latest installment of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast. You know how to do that, right?

Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes: "Ed Wood and the Vampire"

Vampire! Vampire! Lemon! So close and yet...

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams (Arcane Shadows Press, 2024).

The story: "Ed Wood and the Vampire" by Danielle DeVor

Synopsis: It is 1955, and director Ed Wood is on a years-long quest to make a movie starring an actual vampire. He once thought actor Bela Lugosi made such a convincing onscreen Dracula because he was the genuine article, but Bela proved to be all too human. So Ed's quest continues. Ed's girlfriend Dolores says this is all a waste of time and storms out on him. Undeterred, Ed continues to make notes in his little green book. He's determined to keep track of every prominent actor to play Count Dracula in the hopes that one of them will be a genuine vampire.

A disappointment to Ed.

By 1958, a new actor from England named Christopher Lee is portraying the famous bloodsucker, so Eddie travels to Milwaukee to attend the premiere of Hammer's Horror of Dracula. Unfortunately, none of the actors from the film is in attendance that night. In New York, at a gala showing of the film, Eddie is unable to get anywhere near Christopher Lee, but he still determines that Lee is not a real vampire. Too healthy looking. Ed's wife Kathy also thinks this quest is foolish, but Eddie is more driven than ever.

In 1966, Eddie reluctantly attends a screening of Billy the Kid vs. Dracula to see John Carradine as the count. To his disappointment, the film is a "farce," and Carradine is clearly no vampire. The pickings get slim until 1974 when Jack Palance portrays Dracula in a made-for-TV movie. By this time, Eddie's personal fortunes have dwindled, forcing him to live in a "grimy" apartment. That same year, Ed Wood attends a screening of Blood for Dracula starring Udo Kier in the title role. This film, however, is mere pornography. Three years later, Louis Jourdan stars in another made-for-TV adaptation of the Bram Stoker novel. Despite the faithfulness to the source material, Eddie is far from convinced that Jourdan is a vampire.

The story ends in late 1978. Ed Wood has been evicted from his Yucca Street apartment. (His death goes unmentioned.) A disgruntled landlord throws Eddie's possessions into the trash, including that green notebook Ed had been keeping since the '50s. It is picked up by a genuine vampire who happens to be passing by.

Excerpt:

He'd looked for clues far and wide, and soon, there had been buzz about a new vampire on the block. One from England. As soon as he spied Christopher Lee, he had that feeling again. Could this be a real vampire hiding in plain sight? There was presence. Pizazz. Kathy thought he was nuts for travelling all the way to Milwaukee for the premiere, but he couldn't let this go.

Reflections: Some of the authors who contributed stories to Warm Angora Wishes are people I already knew well from the Ed Wood fan community, but many are writers I've never heard of until right now. One example of the latter is authoress Danielle DeVor, who has written numerous fantasy and horror novels, including some romances, but has been off my radar thus far. I'm not certain if she'd been an Ed Wood fan before this project or if the editor approached her because of her other, similarly-themed books.

Either way, DeVor brings a perspective to this material that I don't think I've seen from other authors. The Ed Wood in this story is not one I fully recognized, so it was almost like having a new character to play with. The story's chief conceit is that Eddie is seeking a real vampire in order to make a movie with him. Over the course of two decades, this quest takes over—and even defines—his life. He's like some Bizarro World version of Van Helsing who seeks to glorify, rather than kill, Dracula.

DeVor's Ed Wood seems to have a different set of aesthetic standards than the Ed I know. This one turns up his nose at Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (1966) and later scoffs at the idea of Western actor Jack Palance playing the character on TV. "What was this about cowboys and vampires?" DeVor writes. "This was some type of weird obsession with some people he didn't understand." In real life, Eddie was as obsessed with cowboy films as he was with horror films and famously tried and failed to get a Western/horror hybrid called The Ghoul Goes West made. And the idea of pairing Dracula with Billy the Kid is one I think would have appealed to Ed quite a bit.

Then, in 1974, Ed Wood attends a screening of Paul Morrissey's Blood for Dracula (1974)—which I assume was still being marketed as Andy Warhol's Dracula back then—and has this puzzling reaction:

He shouldn’t have wasted his time or the money. He didn’t expect to see a porn instead of a horror film. Not that he was against porn at all, but it surprised him. He’d never thought of meshing Dracula with pornography, but it would work. And it did, in an odd kind of way.

I've heard that the world has become more prudish in recent years, but I didn't think I'd see the day when Blood for Dracula was described as "porn." Yes, it has a few nude scenes and a smattering of simulated sex, but that accounts for a relatively small percentage of its run time. Is that what people think porn is nowadays? Anything with nudity or onscreen sex? Is Don't Look Now (1973) porn? How about Something Wild (1986) or Body Heat (1981)? How did TV series like True Blood (2008-2014) and Game of Thrones (2011-2019) sneak by us without getting labeled "porn"? They're both much more explicit than Morrissey's film. Besides, Ed Wood worked extensively in both softcore and hardcore pornography in the 1960s and '70s. By his standards, Blood for Dracula could be considered almost Victorian in its restraint. 

As for "meshing Dracula with pornography," that phrase neatly summarizes much of Ed's fiction. In his novels and short stories, he combined horror and erotica over and over again—often in ways that are much more graphic than Blood for Dracula. Ed Wood is so closely identified with erotic horror that the novel The Adult Version of Dracula (1970) has commonly been attributed to him. Whether the attribution is correct is a matter of debate, but Ed was the kind of writer who conceivably could have written such a book. Eddie even went out of his way to mention both Bela Lugosi and Dracula in his pornographic feature film Necromania (1971).

It's possible that the Ed Wood in this story is not the Ed Wood we know from history, just a fictional character with the same name and a vaguely similar career path. The one in this story doesn't seem to be a cross-dresser, nor is he a prolific writer. He makes films and hunts Dracula. That's it. In fact, DeVor's character spends more time chasing after vampires than he does making movies. Speaking of which, none of Eddie's films is named in this story, and neither Dolores nor Kathy is given a last name. While I assume they're Dolores Fuller and Kathy Wood, I can't say that with 100% certainty. 

The Ed Wood in this story seems to be on a downward career path and ends up being evicted from his Yucca St. apartment in the late '70s, all of which happened to the real Ed Wood. DeVor's Ed Wood also drinks a bit, but he's not a late-stage alcoholic shuffling down to the liquor store to cash his meager paycheck the way the real Eddie was. DeVor's character even drinks Wild Turkey, which probably would have been out of the real Ed Wood's price range. Compared to the real man with whom he shares a name, the Ed Wood of this story is living in luxury.

P.S. If this story appeals to you, I highly recommend this Cinemassacre video that compares all the screen versions of Bram Stoker's Dracula. 

Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes: "Heaven Knows Mr. Wood."

Ed Wood goes to a very specific version of Heaven in this story.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams (Arcane Shadows Press, 2024).

The story: "Heaven Knows Mr. Wood" by Dwight Kemper

This is where Ed Wood died.

Synopsis: In December 1978, filmmaker Edward D. Wood, Jr. and his wife Kathy are evicted from their Hollywood apartment and have to move in with a friend of theirs, actor Peter Coe. A few days later, while Peter, Kathy, and some other friends are watching a football game on television, Ed Wood dies of a heart attack in a back bedroom at the age of 54. There's a look of horror on his face. At his memorial service, the famed TV psychic Criswell, a longtime friend of Eddie's, tells Kathy that her late husband will be long-remembered and that God has "a soft spot for artists."

Meanwhile, Ed Wood arrives in Heaven and finds it to be a giant movie soundstage, complete with scenery and microphones. Even St. Peter, who sits at a podium at the Pearly Gates, looks and talks exactly like Bela Lugosi. Eddie is surprised, but not upset, to find himself dressed in the blue gingham dress and ruby slippers that Judy Garland wore in The Wizard of Oz (1939). Cross-dressing is not frowned upon in the afterlife. Peter tells Ed that his movies have brought happiness to many, and so the late director will be allowed to live in paradise. He already has a friend waiting for him at the Old Actors' Cloud.

Eddie ventures along the Yellow Brick Road until he meets the actual Bela Lugosi, who is hanging out with fellow horror icons Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff. They stop to chat. Eddie eventually realizes that his dreams have come true. He is finally a filmmaker with unlimited money and resources, and Bela and the others are set to star in his next opus.

Excerpt: 

Startled, Eddie turned around and found himself in front of a high podium where a bearded man was waiting. Behind him were a pair of gates, the bars of which appeared to be lit by bulbs inside frosted plastic. The floor of the stage was covered with the crawling wisps of dry ice smoke. Ed looked down and saw he was now wearing a  sweater made from the finest angora and a gray skirt and sensible shoes.

Reflections: "Heaven," said Russell Green, "is where the donkey finally catches up with his carrot. Hell is the eternity while he waits for it." I think this old saying applies itself to Ed Wood pretty easily, and it was on my mind as I pondered Eddie's fate in the afterlife. I also thought about a 2013 episode of the web series Precious Plum in which the title character (Elaine Carroll), a child beauty pageant contestant, innocently asks her mother (Josh Ruben) what Heaven is like.

The carrot and the donkey.

"Like Target," replies the mother casually, "but everything's free."

I can sympathize with Plum's mother here. We often have a difficult time envisioning or describing the afterlife because we've obviously never experienced it. Besides, we're so focused on our earthly lives that we can't imagine an existence that's completely divorced from the physical, material world that we know. 

And so, most depictions of Heaven in art and fiction are just fancier versions of Earth. What else do we have to go on? Movies and television shows tell us that, after we die, we'll still look like ourselves, talk like we always have, and think with the same brains we had in life. Multiple writers have come to the conclusion that eternity will eventually grow boring for us, but this presupposes that we'll still have an attention span after we die.

Author Dwight Kemper addresses this problem in his story "Heaven Knows Mr. Wood," in which Ed Wood and Bela Lugosi reunite in the Great Beyond. And what do they do once they're up there? Make movies, of course! It's all they know. Kemper has Lugosi say in his unmistakable accent: "Heaven is vatever you make of it. Ve are all movie stars, so naturally, Heaven, it reflects vat ve know."

Maybe this isn't so bad. I'm a self-confessed game show addict, and one of my great pleasures in life is watching reruns of the '70s edition of Match Game hosted by Gene Rayburn. Every once in a while, I'll remember that Gene and nearly all the celebrity panelists (Brett Somers, Charles Nelson Reilly, Betty White, Richard Dawson) are dead. On the TV screen, they're still alive and filled with boundless energy. Where did all that energy go? Did it just evaporate into nothing when they died? It comforts me to think that, somewhere, there's a big Match Game reunion going on in Heaven right now.

I felt the same sort of comfort while reading "Heaven Knows Mr. Wood." In this story, Eddie dies broke and homeless, but in Heaven, he finally gets to be the filmmaker he always wanted to be on Earth. In other words, the donkey has finally caught up with his carrot.